Journalism & Publishing

Avid Reader.

By Robert Gottlieb.

Sept. 2016. 352p. Farrar, $28 (9780374279929). 070.5.

Gottlieb’s constant and eclectic reading,
along with a “series of flukes,” delivered him to
the publishing world, the ideal arena not only
for his passion for books but also for his boundless energy and gift for fruitful collaborations.
An exceptionally accomplished and influential
editor and the author of numerous profiles
(Lives and Letters, 2011) and biographies (
Balanchine, Bernhardt), Gottlieb now tells his
many-faceted life story with zest and precision,
standouts as Joseph Heller, Robert Caro, Toni
Morrison, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré,
and tells incisive tales of helping the famous
craft their memoirs, including Bill Clinton and
National Book Award–winner Lauren Bacall.
Though he avers, “Work is my natural state of
being,” clearly his longtime marriage to actor
Maria Tucci and his close friendships with writers and publishing professionals, so eloquently
celebrated here, have inspired and sustained
him. While book lovers will revel in Gottlieb’s
intimate publishing revelations, his memoir is
also a vital, generous, and captivating story of a
life lived to the fullest. —Donna Seaman

Prominent illustrator and cartoonist Sorelgrew up in the Bronx during the Great De-pression as a “latchkey kid” who entertainedhimself by drawing andgoing to the movies, pas-sions that fuel this unique,witty, deeply involving il-lustrated chronicle of hislong enthrallment with themovie star Mary Astor. Hisobsession was triggered in1965 when he ripped upan old linoleum floor and discovered a layer oftabloid newspapers from 1936 recounting inscreeching headlines Astor’s scandalous cus-tody battle for her daughter after her currenthusband got hold of her diary and its explicitrecord of her affair with playwright GeorgeS. Kaufman. Steeped in Astor’s troubled life,Sorel recounts her monstrous parents’ brutalexploitation of her beauty and talent, her ini-tiation into acting and sex by John Barrymore,her disastrous marriages to cruel mooches, herlove for Kaufman, her depression, her viciousprosecution, and her triumphant grace underpressure. Sorel deftly mixes in compelling epi-sodes from his own life, including run-ins withthe FBI and the impetus for the left-wing po-litical satire in his famous work for the Nation,the Atlantic, and the New Yorker. Sorel’s writ-ing is jaunty and affecting, and his jazzilydynamic and keenly expressive drawings mas-terfully capture the edginess and glamour ofAstor’s world as he brings the underappreci-ated actor back into the limelight with verveand empathy. —Donna Seaman

Open to Debate: How William F.

Buckley Put Liberal America on the
Firing Line.

By Heather Hendershot.

Oct. 2016. 432p. illus. Broadside, $28.99

(9780062430458). 070.92.

How is it that sixties firebrands such as Eldridge Cleaver, Germaine Greer, and Noam
Chomsky found a favorable venue for voicing
their revolutionary messages on a public-issues
television show hosted by an
iconic American conservative? Hendershot answers this
puzzling question by looking
closely at how that show—

Firing Line—reflected the
remarkable personality of its
charismatic host, William F.
Buckley. As she surveys the

33 years during which Buckley hosted almost1,500 episodes, Hendershot recognizes thatthis cerebral conservative used the program asa platform to shape and promulgate the con-servative cause, giving special attention to theGoldwater Revolution. But Hendershot mar-vels at the diversity of progressive and radicalthinkers Buckley invited to share his broadcaststage. Though herself a liberal who shares fewof his political views, Hendershot lauds Buck-ley for the intelligence, honesty, wit, civility,and élan with which he developed meaningfuldialogues with these diverse thinkers, dialoguesthat actually enriched viewers’ understandingof the complexities of the nation’s political life.Indeed, she laments the difficulty of findinganything remotely similar to Buckley’s Fir-ing Line in the predictable and slogan-drivencurrent programming of Fox News on theright and MSNBC on the left. A cogent re-minder of what political broadcasting could be.—Bryce Christensen

Philosophy & Psychology

The Voices Within: The History &
Science of How We Talk to Ourselves.

By Charles Fernyhough.

Oct. 2016. 320p. Basic, $27.99 (9780465096800).
153.42.

Do you think in voices? In text? Pictures?
Is it hard to pin down mentally, let alone in
words, how your own thoughts flit across your
mind’s stage? Then imagine how much harder is the
task of researchers—such
as Fernyhough, a psychology professor at Durham
University, in England—
who work to pin down the
thought patterns of others.
Fernyhough’s investigations,
as well as related work by many others, form
the backbone of this title; interspersed among
the accessible scientific descriptions are related observations ranging from the reading
habits of Saint Augustine to the chatter of the
author’s toddler. As in the best scientific writing, Fernyhough presents his own viewpoints
clearly but also provides readers with an overview of other positions taken in the field. The
material can be used with patrons who have

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